Cycling UK has called upon the Government to review the legislation relating to bad driving offences. The renewed call comes following three recent cases where drivers were sentenced for causing death by careless driving having initially been charged with the more serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving.

Most recently, Paul Brinkman was sentenced to eight months in prison and was disqualified from driving for two years and four months after his guilty plea for death by careless was accepted by the prosecution.

Cambridge News reports that Brinkman had been charged with causing death by dangerous driving after his van hit cyclist Ronald Bousted, 74, while overtaking a car on a narrow country lane near Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire on November 24, 2015.

Emma Nash, prosecuting, said: “The defendant clearly hadn’t seen the victim, because he was too close behind the other driver and his vision was obscured.”

Sentencing, Judge David Farrell said that Brinkman, a professional driver, had taken a risk in poor weather on a country lane and overtaken when it was unsafe to do so.

“No sentence given by this court could ever reflect the loss of someone’s life and no-one can ever turn the clocks back. Had you have been more patient, this matter could have been averted.”

In a separate case last week, Mishal Alshammary was warned to expect a custodial sentence after he hit and killed cyclist Clifton James having not slowed down for a mini-roundabout in Harrow. Again, the prosecution accepted a guilty plea to the lesser charge of causing death by careless driving. A formal not guilty verdict was entered to the charge of causing death by dangerous driving.

Magee – who had parked on double yellow lines, near a junction, facing into oncoming traffic – pulled away from the Co-op store in Teynham without indicating and moved across the carriageway into cyclist Barbara Phipps.

He was also criticised by the judge for not using on-board cameras or for using his wing mirrors correctly, yet denied the more serious charge of causing death by dangerous driving and this was accepted by the prosecution.